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In an effort to develop visualization analysis and design skills in master's level information visualization students, the authors use a well-known analytical usability evaluation method, heuristic evaluation, with different sets of heuristics to teach students to analyze visualization applications. The proposed approach, used for three consecutive years, has successfully stimulated critical analysis and discussion sessions as well as helped raise students' awareness concerning the benefit of using systematic analysis methods and the strategies and guidelines that should be used to design visualization applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronary CT angiography is widely used in clinical practice for the assessment of coronary artery disease. Several studies have shown that the same exam can also be used to assess left ventricle (LV) function. Even though coronary CT angiography provides data concerning multiple cardiac phases, along the cardiac cycle, LV function is usually evaluated using just the end-systolic and end-diastolic phases. This unused wealth of data, mostly due to its complexity and the lack of proper tools, has still to be explored to assess if further insight is possible regarding regional LV functional analysis. Furthermore, different parameters can be computed to characterize LV function and though some are well known by clinicians others still need to be tested concerning their value in clinical scenarios. Based on these premises, we present several parameters characterizing global and regional LV function, computed for several cardiac phases over one cardiac cycle. The data provided by the computed parameters is shown using a set of visualizations allowing synchronized visual exploration of the different data. The main purpose is to provide means for clinicians to explore the data and gather insight over their meaning and their correlation with each other and with diagnosis outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors argue in favor of introducing user studies into computer graphics, human-computer interaction, and information visualization courses. They discuss two sets of user studies they developed and performed over several years, with student collaboration, and the different aspects of the studies they had to consider. They also discuss a user study they designed for an information visualization course. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Polygonal meshes are used in several application areas to model different objects and structures. Depending on the application, mesh models sometimes have to be processed to, for instance, reduce their complexity (mesh simplification). Such operations introduce differences regarding the original mesh, whose evaluation is of paramount importance when choosing the processing methods to be applied for a particular purpose. Although some mesh analysis and comparison tools are described in the literature, little attention has been given to the way mesh features and mesh comparison results can be visualized. Moreover, particular functionalities have to be made available to enable systematic use and proper data analysis and exploration. PolyMeCo—a tool for polygonal mesh analysis and comparison—was designed and developed taking the above objectives into account. It enhances the way users analyze features and compare meshes by providing an integrated environment where various mesh quality measures and several visualization options are available and can be used in a coordinated way, thus leading to greater insight into the visualized data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Modern computer graphics courses require students to complete assignments involving computer programming. The evaluation of student programs, either by the student (self-assessment) or by the instructors (grading) can take a considerable amount of time and does not scale well with large groups. Interactive judges giving a pass/fail verdict do constitute a scalable solution, but they only provide feedback on output correctness. In this article, we present a tool to provide extensive feedback on student submissions. The feedback is based both on checking the output against test sets, as well as on syntactic and semantic analysis of the code. These analyses are performed through a set of code features and instructor-defined rubrics. The tool is built with Python and supports shader programs written in GLSL. Our experiments demonstrate that the tool provides extensive feedback that can be useful to support self-assessment, facilitate grading, and identify frequent programming mistakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Craniometric analysis plays an important role in anthropology studies and forensics. This paper presents CraMs, an application using a new craniometric approach based on 3D models of the skull. The main objective is to obtain, through a process supervised by anthropologists, the main points of interest used to compute craniometric measurements. The application aids this process by analyzing the skull geometry and automatically providing points of interest. The application also allows for semiautomatic point detection, where the user provides an initial guess that might be refined based on the curvature of the skull, as well as the manual selection of any other points of interest. Moreover, results comparing measurements obtained with CraMs and traditional craniometry methods on eight skulls suggest that the application provides comparable craniometric measurements and lower inter-observer variability. This approach offers advantages such as an easier access to skulls with no risk of bone damage and the possibility of defining new measurements based on morphology or other skull characteristics, which are not possible using traditional methods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

DETI-Interact is an interactive system that offers information relevant to students in the lobby of the University of Aveiro's Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics (DETI). The project started in 2009 with a master's thesis addressing interaction with public displays through Android smartphones. Since then, it has evolved considerably; it currently allows gesture interaction based on a Kinect sensor. Meanwhile, it has involved third-year students, master's students, and undergraduate students participating in a research initiation program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geophysical experts aimed to establish a method to identify contamination by landfill leakage without chemically analyzing subsoil samples, which is time-consuming and expensive. To that end, researchers developed a software package that let the experts create 3D visualizations of geophysical data acquired around the landfill and apply statistical analysis to detect anomalous values. The data used, electrical resistivity, are typically sparse. So, the application employs kriging to interpolate the data and provide a volumetric representation of the subsoil resistivity. To avoid invalid conclusions, the visualization also represents uncertainty. The application enabled the experts to better understand the phenomenon and to develop and validate their method. Their evaluation of the application indicated that it helped them throughout the method's development and significantly eased their workload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past 10 years have seen profound changes in visualization algorithms, techniques, methodologies, and applications. These changes are forcing alterations to visualization courses. Unfortunately, outdated course content recommendations, together with profound changes in the underlying technology and methodology, are producing an unstable ground for educators at a time when visual representations are becoming increasingly important. To address this issue, educators held meetings or workshops at Siggraph 2011 and 2012 and a panel and workshop at Eurographics 2012. This article presents the insights gathered at these events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]